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Yuri Vynnychuk
rarely ate them, and Yarosh
did not have a sweet tooth,
so the jars of jam increasingly
took up all the shelves in the
pantry, since there was no
longer any space for them,
but every August the very
same procedure took place –
boiling down the berries and
mixing them with a wooden
spatula in a large basin. At
that time auntie resembled a
sorceress who was preparing
some kind of magic potion.
She was focused and serious,
and every fly that dared to fly
at this sacred time into the
kitchen, immediately fell into
her field of vision and onto
the rubber flap of her swatter.
The scent of the softened
loose berries intoxicated
and infused the walls and
furniture so powerfully that
the house looked like candy
and everything in it – as if
it were made of marzipan.
Any attempts to convince
auntie not to putter around
her preserves failed; she just
couldn’t overcome that habit
and didn’t want to, because
her beloved was terribly fond
of sweets, andmany times she
nostalgically
remembered
feeding him with a teaspoon,
and he would lick up
everything clean, with drops
of red or yellow jam glistening
on his lips and tongue,
and afterward she herself
would relish those droplets;
every time she set about
puttering around the jam,
these recollections would
spring up in her memory
and kept there until this
process was complete, and
then little by little diminished
and dissipated until the next
August.
One such summer, when the
heat was stifling and the air
hovered over the trees, auntie
Lucia,
having
exhausted
herself by the stove, sat down
in an armchair and dozed off,
forgetting to turn off the gas
under the basin with the hot